For the past year, I have been adding to my Flipboard ( # Silent Witness to Climate Change) anything connected to the subject.

In the last few months, the shit really started hitting the fan.

Record heat waves in Pakistan, India, each killing thousands of people, while California burns, Port Rico has little or no water and the Helheim glacier in Greenland lost 10 billion tons of ice.

Countries and communities around the world are already experiencing stepped-up climate change impacts – including droughts, floods, more intense and frequent natural disasters, and sea-level rise – and the most vulnerable are being hit the hardest.

It is not difficult nor does it require Artificial intelligence to realize that if the world does not address Co2 emissions we are looking at mass migration, economic collapse, not to mention wars that will threaten the very fabric of civilization.

GLOBAL WARMING IS ALREADY HAPPING FAR FASTER THAN THE 2 DEGREES CELSIUS LIMITED SET BY THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT. THE CURRENT RATE OF EMISSIONS WITHIN THE PRESENT CENTURY WILL EFFECT OUR OCEANS – IRREVERSIBLE.

The appearance of low-oxygen regions is doubling every ten years, spreading from coastal areas into deep and deeper water, forcing fish whales and pretty much every living ocean creatures upwards. Cold patches in the ocean are slowing warm ocean circulation currents while acidifying continuous unabated with over six percent of the world reefs disappearing before the end of the decade.

SURELY WE DON’T NEED TO BE TOLD THAT HURRICANES ARE GETTING STRONGER AND MORE AND MORE DEVASTATING NATURAL DISASTER ARE OCCURRING WORLDWIDE. Considering all of the other climate forces surely its time that our world leaders whether in or out of government stand up and take notice.

We are all however through our self-image underestimate climate change.

If you ask me no one can comment on how far in the future these changes will occur but what is happing to the Bearing sea is already providing us with a snapshot of what is to come and it won’t be gradual. (The Bearing sea was once a barrier between the Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean it is now an arm of the Atlantic.)

Rather than seeing lots of regional tipping points, the future will be the sum of all the climatic events and their interaction. It won’t be Florida that is wiped off the map but the whole of the earth ecosystems.

With the Donald Trump promoting America First, fueling trade wars and opting out of the Paris Climate agreement it would be a brave political leader to be advocating that we should cut consumption for obvious economic reasons.

Social media continues to dilute any long-term coordinated political engagement, aiding populous ends, and fragmented partitions.

To reduce Co2 emissions we are left with one option and that NEEDS to engage all of us.

So what if anything can be done?

All TV stations should be legally obliged to provide their viewers with a weather forecast once a month that is dedicated to the effects of climate change in order to bring the subject to the attention of the viewing public.

We are beginning to see small communities developing their own sustainable energy supply. GOVERNMENTS NEED TO SUPPORT THIS TRANSFORMATION WITH REWARDS AND SUBSIDIES WHETHER ITS TAX BRAKES OR PAYING FOR THE ENERGY GENERATED.

WHAT IF YOU WERE REWARDED FOR CONVERTING TO SOLAR PANELS.

To make a difference worldwide we must make GREED IN THE FORM OF PROFIT CONTRIBUTE. ( see previous posts on a WORLD AID FUND)

Will any of this happen?

Nuclear power – Infusion – Technology- Paris Climate Agreement, you name it, will not stop natures environmental response to our abuses of sustainability.

THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT IF WE ARE TO TURN THE TIDE ON CLIMATE CHANGE GOVERNMENTS AND ALL OF US MUST RESHAPE THE FUTURE OF ENERGY.

TO BENEFIT SOCIALLY AND FINANCIALLY FROM THE ENEGERY WE MUST TRANSITION TO COMMUNITIES MODELS.

While we are all becoming aware that we are at the edge of a new phase of human history. To get there we must act not as machines driven by data and algorithms ungoverned by ethical philosophical norms.

INDIVIDUALS TURNED INTO DATA TO FUEL PARTIES FOR POLITICAL OR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES IS NOT GOING TO TACKLE THE PROBLEMS THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS BRING TO THE WORLD.

ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE ALGORITHMS ARE WEAKENING THE FORTITUDE REQUIRED TO ACT.

POLITICAL LEADERS OVERWHELMED BY NICHE PRESSURES ARE DEPRIVED OF TIME TO THINK OR REFLECT ON CONTEXT, CONTRACTING THE SPACE AVAILABLE FOR THEM TO DEVELOP VISION.

THE DIGITAL WORLD WITH ITS INCENTIVES IS EMPOWERING THE RADICAL OVER THE THOUGHTFUL TO SUCH AN EXTENT THAT WE MUST EXPECT AI TO MAKE MISTAKES FASTER- AND OF GREATER MAGNITUDE THAT HUMANS DO.

AI may well in the future reach its intended goals, but it will be unable to explain the rationale for its conclusions.

THE TERM ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE IS A MISNOMER.

THE TECHNOLOGICAL WORLD IS PREOCCUPIED WITH COMMERCIAL VISTAS RATHER THAN EXPLORING THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HUMAN CONDITION THAT IT HAS BEGUN TO PRODUCE.

THERE IS ONE THING FOR CERTAIN IF WE DO NOT START TO ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGES SOON WITH A GLOBAL EFFORT TO CLEAN UP OUR ACT WE SHALL DISCOVER THAT WE STARTED TOO LATE.

The problem is that the concept of “artificial intelligence” is way too potent for its own good.

Ai, Machine learning, Deep learning neural networks have no obvious ways of performing logical inferences all are still a long way from integrating abstract knowledge, such as information about what objects are, what they are for, and how they are typically used.

These are the three terms you’re most likely to have heard lately, and, to be as simple as possible, we can think of them in layers. Neural networks are at the bottom — they’re a type of computer architecture on to which artificial intelligence is built.

Machine learning is next — it’s a program you might run on a neural network, training computers to look for certain answers in pots of data; and

Deep learning is on top — it’s a particular type of machine learning that’s only become popular over the past decade, largely thanks to two new resources: cheap processing power and abundant data (otherwise known as the internet).

The concept of neural networks goes all the way back to the ‘50s and the beginning of AI as a field of research.

In a nutshell, these networks are a way of structuring a computer so that it looks like a cartoon of the brain, comprised of neuron-like nodes connected together in a web. Individually these nodes are dumb, answering extremely basic questions, but collectively they can tackle difficult problems. More importantly, with the right algorithms, they can be taught.

In other words, they don’t have any common sense.

BUT WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE EVER DEVELOP IMAGINATION.

In most cases, the systems making claims to artificial intelligence aren’t sentient, self-aware, volitional, or even surprising. They’re just software.

AI platforms should do more than answer simple questions. They should be able to learn at scale, reason with purpose, and naturally, interact with humans TO BE CALLED INTELLIGENT.

THERE IS PRESENTLY A GREAT MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE TERM ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AMONG THE PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS WHEN IT COMES TO NOT ONLY IDENTIFYING AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

With Artificial intelligence poised to disrupt everything, it’s time we get on the same page as to what AI is, and perhaps more importantly, what we want it to be so that we can regulate and control the technology.

IF WE DON’T ANYONE LOOKING TO DRAW BUZZ TO THEIR PRODUCTS WILL CONTINUE TO CO-OPT THE PHRASE.

If we don’t we won’t NOTICE WHEN A TRUE REVOLUTIONARY AI SYSTEM DOES ARRIVE.

AND HOW PROBLEMATIC THAT WILL BE.

NOW IS THE TIME THAT WE MUST FULLY ALIGN THE GOAL’S OF AI WITH OURS WHICH IS ALREADY STRICKLING DIFFICULT WITHOUT AN OVERALL GOVERNING WORLD BODY.

IT IS PARAMOUNT FOR WORLD PEACE NOT TO MENTION IN THE COMING YEARS TO REDUCE THE INCREASING GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR THAT EVERY AI PROGRAM SHOULD BE VETTED NOT JUST FOR A SUREFIRE WAY OF PREDICTING HOW IT WILL BEHAVE BUT TO ENSURE IT COMPLIES WITH OUR COMMON HUMAN VALUES.

FOR TRANSPARENCY AND RESPONSIBILITY EVERY AI PROGRAM SHOULD BE REGISTERED WITH THIS WORLD BODY WITH A SHUTDOWN PROGRAM.

This may be the reason why AI is able to add fuel to the fire of other technologies such as analytical tools that monitor our behavior online, what we buy, who we talk to, where we have been, where we might go, with whom, and why.

All for a competitive advantage to make a profit.

AI’s use is rising exponentially with volumes of free data flooding every nook and nanny of our existence.

You might believe that this all harmless leading to the smarter handling of big data but we need to wake up if we think so.

Siri and Alexa are not machines with just catchy names nor are they AI assistants. Bring one into your life and you will be inviting general AI to take over your decisions. Aping the nuances of the human brain they will adapt to their environment demonstrating empathy and perception whether you are an idiot or not, inevitably it’s the former element that they are after. The blurring of the lines between man and machine.

The ramifications of which remain an elusive shadow on the digital horizon.

So what potential does artificial intelligence really have to change our lives.?

THE ANSWER IS VAST.

THE DIFFICULTY IS HOW DO YOU GET A BALANCED VIEW OF DATA AS ALL DATA IS BIAS.

Very often, when talking about AI, we like to automatically couple it with other terms such as Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Neural Networks. This makes it sound like over 90% of AI is this kind of statistical algorithm that only PhDs can understand.

This is where we are dead wrong about AI.

In order for AI to have a significant impact on our society, it must understand not only how to act like a human, but also how to think like us.

Unfortunately, while the information revolution has enabled us to collect petabytes of data on how we act in a certain situation, not much data has been collected on how we think. This makes it impossible to properly train an AI system.

Machines need to start learning how we conceptualize the world.

What this means for AI researchers and companies, is that the true future of AI lies in design, in an AI’s ability to interact with and learn from humans, and in understanding human contexts — not in more powerful CPUs and algorithms.

This also means technical prowess will become less and less important in building a great AI, relative to deep empathy toward the needs and challenges of the end users who will be interacting with these AI systems.

We must fully align the AI’s goals with ours, which is going to be strikingly difficult.

We must also ensure that every AI program has a surefire way of predicting how it will behave.

All AI’s programmes must have a shutdown button.

Human level AI may be centuries away however we are already witnessing the effects of both the good and bad they are bringing to societies.

What will it mean to be human in the age of AI?

THERE IS ONE THING FOR CERTAIN:

IF WE CONTINUE TO ALLOW MONOPOLY PLATFORMS TO RULE THE ROOST WITH PROFIT SEEKING ALGORITHMS WE WILL SEE INEQUALITIES ON GLOBAL SCALE.

In this forthcoming age of technology, WE SHOULD NOW BE QUESTIONING what will be the point of life if we are not living it alone with free will.

Some like me are critical of technology, holding that it leads to alienation from nature, environmental destruction, the mechanization of human life, and the loss of human freedom.

Technology represents the knowledge of modern humanity, which seeks to control all of nature, including human nature.

As Martin Heidegger has forewarned, “The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control” it will become the master over and destructive of what is.

The ongoing convergence between science fiction and real-life technological advances makes it easy to imagine ‘the digital age’ as an era of conflict between human and bits of intelligence.

Machines are becoming stunningly adept at making decisions for us on the basis of vast amounts of data – and getting better at this at an equally stunning rate.

We call them “smart” and marvel at their powers; we paint pictures of a world in which they, not we, are determining what we do and how.

We can’t help ourselves: we see purpose, autonomy, and intent everywhere.

Machine efficiency is a very poor model indeed for understanding ourselves; and cutting people out of every possible loop – the better to assure speed, profit, protection or military success – is a poor model for a future in which humans and machines equally maximize their capabilities.

When I think about the future of human-machine interactions, and the ways in which our ideas and identities do not simply belong to us anymore the crowd in the cloud is becoming a stream of shared consciousness.

So digital technologies challenge us once again to ask what place we occupy in the universe: what it means to be creatures of language, self-awareness, and rationality. What will be the point of life?

Unfortunately, our conceptual lens is being warped by technology. Why? because death is always in the background. It makes a mockery of everything we do.

In asking what it means to be human, we are prone to think of ourselves as individual, rational minds, and to describe our relationships with and through technology on this basis: as isolated “users” whose agency and freedom are a matter of skills and reasoned options; as task-performers who are existentially threatened by any more efficient agent.

We have little in common with our creations – and a nasty habit of blaming them for things we are doing to ourselves.

Our machines may not yet be alive, nor yet conscious, but the evolutionary pressures surrounding them are every bit as intense as in nature and with few of its constraints.

Life is now, however, it is impossible to get to now never mind the future.

So what is now? Is it just our conscious.

The future is just another thought arising now, and the past is just a memory.

Reality according to quantum physics only exists when it is observed by something that is conscious. But what is an observer? It is not necessarily a human.

Is reality just information?

Information is meaning in the form of symbolism or code, and code can represent itself.

However, information then needs meaning and meaning requires choice which is subjective to perception so something else which is conscious, which then needs time and time effects itself both in the past and the future to produce reality – life, so reality is its own creator with on alternative.

We have a very limited and confused view of what is going on.

How can we create lives that a truly worth living?

If we wish to build not only better machines, but better relationships with and through machines, we need to start talking far more richly about the qualities of these relationships; how precisely our thoughts and feelings and biases operate; and what it means to aim beyond efficiency at lives worth living.

What does a successful collaboration between humans mediated by technology look like? Our creations are certain to grow far beyond our current comprehension:

Indeed, the paradoxical and perhaps troubling state of being “recorded live”, might be one answer to the question of what it means to be human in the current digital world.

Are we all just 3d quasi-crystals or tetrahedra or pixelated reality called the E8 Lattice.

If wisdom is the art of living, of existing, participation in human life is fundamental (Spiegelberg, 1965, 426).

It might be that through our engagement with the actuality of human life, encountering and pursuing the art of living, we might circumvent the trappings that perceive, in modern science and technology, the soteriological temptation of overcoming contingency and infinitude by means of rational inquiry and technological powers.

By such an exercise, humanity might learn not simply to be the handmaid of modern scientific progress and technological promise. Rather, humanity might learn to work against such things. This work, however, ought not to be done in opposition, as a competing exercise of power; but for the redemption of a broken world, or a broken person, which has been encountered,

The redirection of technology will be no easy task.

Contemporary technology is so tightly tied to industry, government, and the structures of economic power that changes in direction will be difficult to achieve. As the critics of technology recognize, the person who tries to work for change within the existing order may be absorbed by the establishment.

But the welfare of humankind requires a creative technology that is economically productive, ecologically sound, socially just, and personally fulfilling.

Each generation lays the ground for the next, ours is ensuring that the voice of the coming generation will be lost in the algorithms of the future.

“ FOLLOW YOUR BLISS AND THE UNIVERSE OPENS DOORS FOR YOU WHERE THERE WERE ONLY WALLS”

Everything has being figured out except how to live.

Life exists in individual moments and it is up to us make sure that those moments are vast, interconnected and grand.

To make a masterpiece out of life. One that we would live again and again for all eternity. This is what we should strive for.

I love this idea, essentialising our lives, of italicising our experiences, of turning our story into thus story, of seeing the universe in the pacific and sort of align ourselves with the archetype of the Hero’s journey, of trying to see a departure from the ordinary in every single instant. A chance to learn something new, a chance to leverage obstacles and learn from them and met people along the way that can teach us something.

Transcend your own limitations, as Stephen Johnston says, “ the world is full of clues and you can read your way through it.” If you are able to turn your life into an art piece. If you are able to turn your narrative into a non-narrative, then you become that Hero; you become the God of your life. It is the archetype of every Film. It’s the Joseph Campbell Hero’s journey.

The problem is that Capitalism has turned life into Consumerism. If people are richer and healthier, then they must be happier.

But social, ethical and spiritual factors have as great an impact on our happiness as material conditions.

Perhaps in this time of modern technology we are beginning to see alienation and meaninglessness replacing prosperity.

So what is happiness? What is it that really makes people happy? What do we measure?

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on Desire.

We all desire to be happy but is it just something we feel inside us. A sense of either immediate pleasure or long-term contentment.

Or is it the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations.

It is quite obvious that money does indeed bring happiness, but only up to a point and beyond that point it has little significance.

Are people happier when living in democracies or dictatorships or living married or single?

Has the democratization process of the last decades contributed to the happiness of humankind or has it had an opposite effect with more divorce?

Questionnaires correlate happiness with various objective factors. But if it is inside who can it be measured ?

Illness decreases happiness.

Family and community have a great impact on happiness.

The importance of human expectations has far-reaching implications for happiness.

Our intolerance of inconvenience and reliance on technology may well lead to discontent on a massive scale.

Through advertising and mass media we are depleting the reservoirs of global contentment by pasting our expectations on to the material conditions of others.

Face book is becoming the giant billboard of life with the smart phone the messenger of contentment and discontentment.

Supposing science did come up with cures for all diseases and an effective anti ageing therapies and regenerative treatments the immediate result will be an unprecedented epidemic of anger and anxiety.

Those that cannot afford the treatments which will be the vast majority will be beside themselves with rage.

So lets ask the question once more, – what is happiness?

Winning the lotto – No.

Because people are made happy by one thing and one thing only

A PLEASANT SENSATION FROM WITHIN.

There is no happy genetic line. Happiness is enjoyed for a momentary rush that does not last for ever. When you get what you desire you not any happier.

Happiness consists in seeing one’s life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile. Our values make all the difference.

If we have a why to live such as a belief of everlasting bliss in the life thereafter perhaps the trick is in synchoronising one’s personal delusions of meaning with the prevailing collective delusions of the capitalist world. So we are in line with the narratives of the people around us you can convince yourself that your life has a meaning.